An analysis of texts narrating the Hundred Years War, from contemporary accounts to the sixteenth century.

This book explores the intersection of the Hundred Years' War and the production of vernacular literature in France and England. Reviewing a range of prominent works that address the war, including those by Deschamps, Christine de Pizan, Gower, Langland, and Chaucer, as well as anonymous texts and the records of Joan of Arc's trial, Inscribing the Hundred Years' War In French and English Cultures demonstrates the ways in which late-medieval authors responded to the immediate sociopolitical pressures and participated in the debates about the war.

What life was like for ordinary French and English people, embroiled in a devastating century-long conflict that changed their world The Hundred Years War (1337-1453) dominated life in England and France for well over a century. It became the defining feature of existence for generations. This sweeping book is the first to tell the human story of the longest military conflict in history. Historian David Green focuses on the ways the war affected different groups, among them knights, clerics, women, peasants, soldiers, peacemakers, and kings. He also explores how the long war altered governance in England and France and reshaped peoples' perceptions of themselves and of their national character. Using the events of the war as a narrative thread, Green illuminates the realities of battle and the conditions of those compelled to live in occupied territory; the roles played by clergy and their shifting loyalties to king and pope; and the influence of the war on developing notions of government, literacy, and education. Peopled with vivid and well-known characters--Henry V, Joan of Arc, Philippe the Good of Burgundy, Edward the Black Prince, John the Blind of Bohemia, and many others--as well as a host of ordinary individuals who were drawn into the struggle, this absorbing book reveals for the first time not only the Hundred Years War's impact on warfare, institutions, and nations, but also its true human cost.

A comparative study of how the societies of late medieval England and France reacted to the long period of conflict between them from political, military, social and economic perspectives.

This historical overview provides a comprehensive look at the people and events that provoked, perpetuated, and finally helped to end the animosity between France and England during the Hundred Years War.

`Careful, original and wide-ranging study of many different aspects of late medieval military history.' HISTORY The Hundred Years War embraced warfare in all aspects, from the grand set pieces of Crecy and Agincourt to the pillaged lands of the dispossessed population. What makes this book different from previous studies emphasising the great battles is its use of less familiar evidence, such as administrative records and landscape archaeology, to gain a truer picture of the realities of medieval warfare. From a general review of battle tactics, the book turns to examine (at points enlisting computer analysis) a number of issues: the composition of the English army, the management of affairs in Aquitaine, the response in England at large to the war and the consequent propaganda and hardship, and the impact of warfare on local communities. Close study of surviving artefacts - weapons, fortifications - also allows realistic assessments of military and naval experiences. Contributors: ANDREW AYTON, MATTHEW BENNETT, ANNE CURRY, IAN FRIEL, ROBERT HARDY, MICHAEL HUGHES, MICHAEL JONES, BRIAN KEMP, JOHN KENYON, MARK ORMROD, ROBERT SMITH, MALCOLM VALE.

This work, the first of a two-volume set, brings together essays of European and American scholars on the wider regional and topical aspects of the Hundred Years War as well as articles that revisit questions posed and supposedly "solved" by traditional Hundred Years War scholarship.